Austin

People have lived around Austin for more than 11,000 years, and in 1730 Spanish missionaries briefly set up a mission beside the Colorado River in what is now Zilker Park before moving it to San Antonio. After Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836, Mirabeau Lamar, who had hunted buffalo here, urged the new republic to put its capital on the north bank of the Colorado. The site, briefly called Waterloo, was renamed in 1839 after Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas", and Edwin Waller laid out a grid with Congress Avenue running up from the river. Sam Houston opposed the remote location and in the "Archive War" tried to remove the state papers; the residents kept them, and in 1845 Austin was confirmed as the capital.

After the Civil War freed Black Texans founded settlements such as Clarksville, and the railway's arrival in 1871 made the town a trading centre for cotton and cattle. The University of Texas held its first classes in 1883 and the granite Capitol was finished in 1888. In the early 20th century segregation separated Anglos, African Americans and Mexican Americans in housing and public life, while dams on the Colorado created the Highland Lakes.

From the 1960s defence electronics and computer firms arrived — Tracor, IBM, Texas Instruments and Motorola — and Dell and many others followed, earning the nickname "Silicon Hills". In the 1970s Willie Nelson and venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters put Austin on the national music map. Since 2010 it has been one of the fastest-growing large cities in the country.

Austin calls itself the "Live Music Capital of the World". The music centres on the bars and clubs of Sixth Street, on Austin City Limits — the longest-running concert programme on American television — and on two festivals: South by Southwest each March, a gathering of music, film and technology that began in 1987, and the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Zilker Park each October. The city's music history runs from the Victory Grill, a renowned venue on the Chitlin' Circuit, to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Willie Nelson, honoured with a memorial and a statue.

The unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird" expresses a wish to protect small local businesses from large corporations, and a strong taste for the odd and homemade — murals, quirky statues and the Zilker Park Summer Musical. Rapid growth and rising prices have fed nostalgia for an "Old Austin" of cheap rents and bohemian freedom.

The University of Texas, with more than 50,000 students, shapes the city's character, and its Longhorns teams command loyalty across the region. Austin FC became the city's first major-league professional team in 2021, and the Circuit of the Americas brings Formula One and NASCAR. Outdoor life is central: swimming at Barton Springs, paddling on Lady Bird Lake and gathering at dusk to watch the bats leave the Congress Avenue Bridge.

Austin had about 962,000 people at the 2020 census, making it the fifth-largest city in Texas and the second-largest state capital in the country after Phoenix, and its metropolitan area has an estimated 2.55 million. Together with San Antonio, 80 miles to the south, it anchors a region of about five million people along Interstate 35. The population is a mix of government employees, students, musicians, high-tech workers and blue-collar workers.

Technology dominates the modern economy. Dell, Tesla — whose headquarters are in its Gigafactory Texas, employing more than 20,000 — and Apple, with its largest campus outside Cupertino, are among the major employers, alongside the state government, the school district, the city and the university. Downtown's residential population grew from about 5,000 in 2005 to about 12,000 in 2015 as condo towers rose.

The cost of that growth is felt every day: rising rents and house prices, gentrification of older neighbourhoods and heavy traffic on Interstate 35 and MoPac. Voters approved a large transit plan, Project Connect, in 2020. Days follow the heat — early runs on the lakeside trail, a swim at Barton Springs, and evenings on patios and in music bars.

Austin's food rests on two Texas traditions, barbecue and Tex-Mex. Brisket is the prize of the barbecue pits, and Franklin Barbecue, opened in 2009, has sold out of it every day since and draws a national following. Queso, a melted cheese dip, is one of the city's most popular foods. Kolaches, filled pastries brought by Texas's Czech and German immigrants, are common in Austin bakeries.

The day starts with breakfast tacos — soft corn or flour tortillas filled with eggs, meat or cheese — and Austin is sometimes called the "home of the breakfast taco". Food trucks and trailers are a defining part of the scene: more than 1,200 were operating in 2016, serving many kinds of food. South Congress mixes them with restaurants and cafés, and Austin's first food hall opened in the base of a downtown office tower.

The city also has a large craft beer scene, with more than 50 microbreweries in the metropolitan area, and the bars of Sixth Street and Rainey Street are the busiest places to drink near downtown. West of the city, the Oasis on Lake Travis, the largest outdoor restaurant in Texas, calls itself the "Sunset Capital of Texas".